Group of Groups

One of my favourite releases of recent months is the double Arbors CD of music by the 1970s supergroup Soprano Summit – much of it previously unissued. Browsing through the CD’s booklet this week, I realised that it’s 30 years since this small, but perfectly formed, outfit disbanded – though its members did get reunite in the 1990s and occasionally thereafter. Here’s a timely, 30th anniversary, tribute…

Soprano Summit was a band which, despite – or possibly because of – its lamentably short lifetime (seven years), has become something of a legend in the jazz world. Certainly, its albums became collectors’ items almost as soon as they were issued. Its conception – at a jazz party organised by enthusiast Dick Gibson over a holiday weekend in September 1972 – became a tale that the late clarinettist Kenny Davern and fellow founding father, saxophonist and clarinettist Bob Wilber, enjoyed telling.

By day three of the party, audiences were suffering from ear fatigue and Gibson decided that he needed something to wake everyone up. According to Davern, Gibson turned to Wilber and said in his Alabama drawl: ”Now, I wan’ you and Kinny to get together and play a duet”. The two, who had rarely performed together, quickly talked through a head arrangement of Duke Ellington’s moody and magnificent The Mooche for two soprano saxophones – a combination, amazingly, never before used in a working jazz band.

”We got a rhythm section together – by a fluke Dick Hyman, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bobby Rosengarden, and Milt Hinton were all there – and we got up and did the number. We finished it off on two high notes in thirds and to our amazement people just rose up in applause – 650 folks just screaming with delight – and it was then that we realised that we had something different.”

In December 1972 the infant Soprano Summit cut its first album, the only difference in personnel being that busy bassist Hinton was replaced by George Duvivier. Then, after a follow-up LP, the second incarnation of Soprano Summit was born.

The main reason for change was an economic one: as a six-piece band, Soprano Summit was an expensive package. The band also wanted to travel light, so the piano had to go. Rhythm guitarist Marty Grosz was signed up to replace Pizzarelli, who was tied up with studio work.

For Grosz, the invitation to join Soprano Summit was a lifeline – as well as a launchpad for the solo career he’s enjoyed ever since. “It was great for me because I’d been toiling in the vineyards – I’d been playing all the crumby jobs in Chicago and wondering if this was all there was in life for me,” recalled Grosz in a 1995 interview. “This band had a feeling of experimentation about it – and I love that.”

Grosz had already heard Soprano Summit on the radio and couldn’t wait to get to New York to take up his new job. “Soprano Summit was a sterling quintet, a peppy, interesting band sort of like the little Jimmie Noone Apex Club group with Jimmie Noone and Joe Posten on clarinet and Posten sometimes on alto sax.”

Grosz shared with Wilber and Davern a love for tunes that were off the beaten standard track. (He passed the test with Davern by being au fait with the Red Allen-Pee Wee Russell number Oh Peter.) Indeed, Soprano Summit’s basic groundplan was to be different and to make a feature of the fact that this was a working band with a varied working repertoire. In Grosz they also had ”a marvellous player who lent the band an entertainment factor with his singing and clowning”. Davern said: ”That was the basic sound of the group: two sopranos, or clarinet and soprano, and the guitar held it together like glue”.

The guitar was the icing on an already rather tasty cake, because the essence of Soprano Summit was the relationship between its two frontmen. Davern put it down to the fact that they grew up on the same music but both have their own views on how it should be played. ”Our differences lie in how to approach the godhead, so to speak. We’re all descendants of classic jazz. Bob has his idea of how it should be interpreted and I have mine. But together, it works.”

In a typical Soprano Summit number they would bounce the melody backwards and forwards between them like a football, with one taking a step back to play the obbligato and create a space for the other to lead the way with a solo. Then several rounds of musical jousting would take place, with each front man vying for musical supremacy – especially, remembered Marty Grosz, on their “big, next-to-closing number, Song of Songs,” a schmaltzy tune that Sidney Bechet used to play. “They way they did it, they’d uilt and build and build it – and people loved it.

“They would build up a head of steam and it would bring the house down.I don’t think either of them would have the horn out of his mouth during the whole number. They’d egg each other on, and try to outdo each other. Then, when they ran out of gas, they’d pass it on to me – and I’d be like a drowning man struggling to keep his head above water..”

There was always a balance between the arranged and the spontaneous, and the only clue to the planned nature of the programme was the fact that they had music in front of them. Indeed, Grosz pointed out: “They were the only band I ever came across who could somehow surmount the fact that they were reading from these charts. I thought it was good that they had little arrangements – otherwise if you don’t play together for a long time, every night in the same club with the same bass player and drummer, then you’re going to end up playing common denominator tunes. This was a chance to do out-of-the-way material.”

Bob Wilber was modest about the way he and Davern worked. “A lot of it was intuitive. We would find out what worked by trying it, and then incorporate it into our repertoire.” Their intuition about one another’s direction also meant that they complemented each other’s playing. Davern observed: ”Sometimes when the two of us play two notes, you can hear a third note present – a harmonic that suddenly appears, a richness.”

Although Soprano Summit split up in 1979, both Wilber and Davern, who thereafter played clarinet exclusively, continued to discuss their musical rapport in the present tense because following the recording of the Chiaroscuro album Summit Reunion (with their original line-up) in 1990, they increasingly found themselves being booked together for concerts, albeit with different rhythm sections. Indeed, plans were afoot for some Wilber and Davern concerts when Kenny Davern died suddenly in December 2006. As he had said, during a mid-1990s reunion, ”people still throw their babies up at this band, at this combination of instruments”.

Thankfully, there are plenty of recordings of this near-mythic band to testify to its ability to give the hairs on the back of the neck a work-out, even three decades after its demise. As the recent Arbors CD of highlights from the tapes recorded by the New Jersey Jazz Society in 1975 demonstrate, the Soprano Summit sound is as fresh, exhilarating and downright thrilling as ever.

***

MARTY GROSZ remembers:

“I joined Soprano Summit in 1975 for a concert at the Carnegie Hall. There I was, with my knees knocking together. Somehow, playing the Carnegie Hall is an unnerving experience. I had to put one foot up on a chair to stop my knees from clacking like castanets while I played the guitar and sang the Milenberg Joys.

“Around that time, we did The Today Show a couple of times. One time we were doing The Today Show and I was singing How Can You Face Me, and Kenny started mugging, pulling his fingers at the corner of his mouth and making all kinds of faces and obscene gestures. It was all I could do not to just give up in the middle of live television and crack up.

“I like that kind of thing in a band. I’d much rather they’d come out with water pistols and soda water bottles than those deadly bands where everybody sits there like zombies and the leader comes out and makes one of those deadly earnest announcements. In this band, we had a chance for craziness like Theatre of the Absurd, which I personally am a fan of.

“Soprano Summit was the only group I ever played with who managed to read music on the stand and not have it have a negative effect on the audience. Usually, when you have a little combo – especially – and the musicians have their eyes down at the paper, you lose contact with the audience. But, for some reason with Soprano Summit, they could surmount the fact that they were reading from these charts.

“We had these little orchestra stands and I sat in the middle – I was the guy who stopped Kenny and Bob from killing each other at times. Kenny was the outspoken one, and Bob was quiet – always thinking about the music; about arrangements.

“Soprano Summit was the band I actually looked forward to playing with. I’m really sorry it had to come to an end. Sometimes when Kenny and Bob were wailing away full tilt, and the rhythm section was boiling, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. And I’m an atheist.”

* The Soprano Summit in 1975 and More (Arbors Records ARCD 19328)

The A-Z of Kane

As a new print of the film generally regarded as the greatest ever made is released, here’s my guide to the Orson Welles masterwork.

A-Z of Citizen Kane

A is for the American Film Institute which, in 2007, voted Citizen Kane the Greatest Movie of All Time – as it had also done in 1998.

B is for Boy Wonder, the nickname given to stage and radio star Orson Welles even before he made Citizen Kane (1941).

C is for ceilings. One of the innovations of Citizen Kane was the way in which the domineering title character was always shot from below, so that his power was always underlined (weaker characters were shot from above) – the result was that the ceilings of rooms were seen for the first time in the movies; in fact this was the first time the sets had had to have ceilings..

D is for debuts. Citizen Kane would have been a phenomenal achievement no matter who had made it but the fact that it was Welles’s debut as a movie director (and actor and producer) is astounding. He had to learn even the basics of filmmaking while he preparing Kane. Despite this – or perhaps because of his lack of technical experience and willingness to experiment – Welles subverted the rules of filmmaking and created a new vocabulary in the language of cinema.

E is for the end. Citizen Kane opens with the end of Kane’s story – his death – and then goes back to his humble beginnings.

F is for flashbacks. The story of Kane’s life is told through a series of flashbacks triggered by a newspaper reporter’s interviews with the tycoon’s former colleagues, ex-wife and friends.

G is for Gregg Toland, the cinematographer hired by Welles because of his flamboyance and unconventional style. One of Kane’s many innovations was “depth of field”, the method Toland devised of composing shots so that the screen was loaded with information and the figures and objects at the front of the screen were in focus at the same time as those at the back.

H is for Hearst, William Randolph – the American press baron who inspired the character and story of Citizen Kane. The film was essentially a thinly veiled biopic, which showed how power corrupted and how great egos are born – and grow out of control. Before the film was released, Hearst offered RKO Studios $800,000 (the cost of the film) to destroy the negative.

I is for innovation. Citizen Kane is packed full of new techniques, from the pioneering use of overlapping dialogue (which Welles brought from radio) to the ahead-of-its-time make-up which allowed the young star to convincingly age by 50 years during the course of the film.

J is for Judy Holliday. The scenes in which Susan Alexander is being bullied by Kane into being an opera singer are similar to those in the 1950 movie Born Yesterday, in which a gangster tries to turn his moll into a refined lady. By coincidence, Judy Holliday, that movie’s Oscar-winning star, was tested for the part of Susan in Citizen Kane.

K is for “King” Cole. The great pianist (and singer) Nat “King” Cole can be heard playing in the scene at the El Rancho nightclub where Susan is working.

L is for legacy. Citizen Kane stands as an astonishingly fresh piece of work nearly 70 years after it was made, and it has inspired countless filmmakers, among them Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg who pays homage to it in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

M is for Mercury Theatre, the stage company that Welles founded with John Houseman in New York in 1937. Known for its bold, original productions, Mercury Theatre branched out into radio drama – most famously its vivid 1938 dramatisation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which, although broadcast as a Hallowe’en prank, caused a nationwide panic as thousands of Americans believed they were listening to news coverage of a real-life alien invasion.

N is for Neverland. Michael Jackson’s vast estate – a sort of mini-kingdom – is the closest modern-day equivalent to Kane’s Xanadu, where he stored and showed off “the loot of the world” – the art work, architecture and animals he collected from across the globe. The gothic Xanadu was inspired by Hearst’s gargantuan castle San Simeon which was stuffed with antiques and art and had its own zoo.

O is for Only One Oscar. Yup, The Greatest Film of All Time won only one Academy Award – for the screenplay written by Welles and Herman J Mankiewicz. In 2003, Welles’s statuette was about to be sold in an auction at Christie’s in New York (by Welles’s youngest daughter) but was voluntarily withdrawn so that the Academy could buy it back for $1, a deal which all Oscar winners have to agree to. It had been expected to fetch over $300,000.

P is for Parsons. Louella O Parsons was the Hearst newspaper group’s Hollywood gossip columnist who could make or break careers. When she heard that Welles’s film was really about her boss, she demanded to be shown it – and blew a gasket. It was her report to Hearst which triggered his pre-emptive strike of banning advertisements for the film from his papers, a move which led some cinema chains to cancel their bookings.

Q is for the QT. Several key scenes in Citizen Kane were filmed on the quiet, behind closed doors, so that studio executives couldn’t interfere with the production. The projection room scene, plus the interviews, were passed off as tests but Welles fully intended to use them in the movie – and he did.

R is for “rosebud”, the last word uttered by Kane as he dies in the opening scenes of the film. It is the quest to discover what “rosebud” was that drives the whole film as a reporter is assigned the job of getting to the bottom of the mystery by interviewing as many of Kane’s friends and associates as necessary.

S is for score. Bernard Herrmann’s evocative score – his first feature film score – contributed much to the sinister atmosphere of the film. He went on to compose the music for such diverse classics as The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947) and Taxi Driver (1976).

T is for twenty-four, the age Welles was when he was making “the greatest film ever made”.

U is for unorthodox. A particularly unusual technique was devised by editor Robert Wise (later the director of The Sound of Music) to make the newsreel footage at the start of the film look authentic and grainy: he ran the film through cheesecloth filled with sand.

V is for vendetta. Hearst’s papers conducted a smear campaign against Welles in revenge for Citizen Kane; one rumour which circulated was that Welles was a communist.

W is for “will-they-won’t-they?”. The release of the film very nearly didn’t happen as RKO’s board buckled under pressure not just from Hearst but also from other studio heads, who felt the controversy would damage the industry. Finally, three months after its original scheduled release date, it opened in New York – the result of Welles pointing out to the studio that his contract gave him the right to sue if the film wasn’t shown within a certain period of time.

X is for x-tras. These included Alan Ladd (who would become a leading man the following year) as the pipe-smoking reporter at the end of the film.

Y is for years. The story of Citizen Kane spans an epic 65 years, from his childhood when he was sent to live in the care of the family lawyer, to his death as an isolated old man. For 50 of those years, Kane was played by Orson Welles.

Z is for the Ziegfeld Follies, the show in which William Randolph Hearst’s much-younger mistress, Marion Davies, was appearing when they first met. Hearst’s relationship with Davies differed from that of Kane and Susan Alexander in the movie in a few ways: although Hearst undoubtedly got Davies into movies, she was actually an accomplished comedienne, whereas her fictional alter ego was a pretty lousy opera singer. And while Susan marries and divorces Kane, Davies, whose movie career made her independently wealthy, remained devoted to her man (though they never married) until his death.
* A new print of Citizen Kane is showing at the GFT, Glasgow from October 30 until Thursday 5, and at the Filmhouse, Edinburgh from October 30 until Sunday 8.

Hallowe’en Movies

It may not have inspired nearly as many movies as those cheerier, more wholesome, festivities that take place in December, but Hallowe’en rears its ugly, pumpkin, head in a rich mix of classic films – from family fantasies, such as ET, to such serious dramas as Kramer Vs Kramer.

It pops up in musicals, romantic comedies, thrillers and chillers. Just as there are certain movies which are perfect for getting us into a Christmassy mood, so there is a less well-documented collection of films which are ideal for conjuring up the spirit of Hallowe’en. Here’s my guide to essential Hallowe’en viewing.

HALLOWE’EN MUST-SEES
1. Arsenic and Old Lace (1941)
“Insanity runs in my family,” says Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) in this madcap black comedy. “In fact, it practically gallops.” And it’s all unleashed on one wild Hallowe’en night when he discovers a body stashed in the window seat of the quaint Brooklyn home shared by his beloved spinster aunts. Turns out they have a penchant for bumping off lonely old gentlemen. It’s not just Aunt Martha and Aunt Abi who are nuts; Mortimer’s brother Teddy thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt, and his other sibling, Jonathan, is a maniac who flies into a murderous rage when anyone comments on his obvious resemblance to Boris Karloff…

 

This timeless classic blends high octane comedy – Cary Grant was never as hysterical as when he was playing the increasingly hysterical Mortimer – with black humour and the genuine chills provided by torture-loving Jonathan Brewster and his slimy, plastic surgeon, sidekick Dr Einstein (the ever-creepy Peter Lorre). It’s a great one to watch in the dark in the middle of the night .. Director Frank Capra followed this Hallowe’en-themed film with the greatest Christmas movie of them all – It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Two festive seasons for the price of one in this cult animation from the eccentric mind of Tim Burton, a magician of the macabre whose every film hints of Hallowe’en-style horrors. This musical, which was clearly inspired by Burton’s heroes, the illustrators Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, tells the story of Pumpkin Jack, the main man in Hallowe’en Town, and what happens when he tires of the Hallowe’en routine and tries his hand at being Santa instead..

 

TRICKS AND TREATS
3. Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
Is there anyone who has seen this heart-warming Judy Garland musical and doesn’t remember the traumatic trick-or-treating scene in which little Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) rises to the terrible challenge of approaching the front door of the scariest man in the street – and throwing flour in his face. Director Vincente Minnelli brilliantly captures the menacing mood as Tootie tentatively knocks on the door… and her jubilation as she realises that she is “the bravest of them all and the most horrible” after she has completed the task that none of the other kids would take on..

 

4. Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Woody Allen’s joyful musical – in which stars ranging from Drew Barrymore to Alan Alda bravely sang old standards (regardless of how well – or not, in the case of Julia Roberts – they could sing) – follows a year in the life of a wacky Park Avenue family. One of the highlights is the Hallowe’en sequence when the children from the building come to the door to trick or treat. This being the wealthiest part of New York, you don’t just get a kid in a supermarket outfit singing a pop song; you get full, MGM-style, production numbers. And the one that the family falls for is a girl dressed as a banana, singing Carmen Miranda’s Chiquita Banana song, accompanied by two maracas-shaking boys in Mexican costume.

 

OF MICE AND BOGEY MEN
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
It’s not a horror movie, but this peerless film of Harper Lee’s wonderful book has an unforgettable scene, set at Hallowe’en, which is utterly terrifying. Our young heroine, Scout, through whose eyes the story is told, is set upon by an assailant in the dark as she and her brother Jem are returning home from a Hallowe’en pageant at their school. Scout is still in her ham costume and is knocked to the ground as the attacker lays into Jem. Her unwieldy, solid costume prevents her from seeing what’s happening and who her attacker is and stops her from being able to get to her feet. All of which adds to the suspense, which is brilliantly heightened by Elmer Bernstein’s magnificent music. The scene is not only extremely scary but also a pivotal point in the plot – as it leads to our first glimpse of the mysterious Boo Radley..

 

6. Hallowe’en (1978)
The low-budget chiller that spawned several sequels and a series of spoofs (the Scary Movies etc), this creepy horror flick takes place on October 31 when a psychotic killer, who has been mistakenly released from an institution, returns to his family home to pick up where he left off 15 years earlier. Jamie Lee Curtis followed in her mother Janet “Psycho” Leigh’s filmic footsteps by being something of a magnet for the murderer..

 

SAUCY SORCERESSES
7. I Married a Witch (1942)
Veronica Lake – she of the peekaboo fringe, petite figure and impish face – was brilliantly cast as Jennifer, the mischievous minx of a witch, who, having been burned at the stake in the 17th century, plots revenge on the modern-day ancestor of the puritan responsible for her fate. She seduces him, wrecks his marriage plans and his political campaign and, of course, ends up falling in love with him in this downright magic romantic comedy which undoubtedly inspired the hit 1960s TV show, Bewitched, but is ten times funnier..

 

8. Bell, Book and Candle (1958)
As sexy sorceresses go, they don’t come more sultry and spellbinding (or chic) than the beatnik witch Gillian Holroyd in this stylish romantic fantasy/comedy which reunited Vertigo stars Kim Novak and James Stewart. Gillian takes a fancy to her new neighbour and uses her magic powers to make him fall in love with her and out of love with the bully who made her life hell at school. Needless to say that she doesn’t expect to fall hook, line and sinker herself …

This dreamy, Manhattan-set romance also stars Elsa “The Bride of Frankenstein” Lanchester as Gillian’s mad old aunt Queenie, while Jack Lemmon is great fun as Gillian’s brother, a wizard with a regular gig playing the bongos at the local witches’ hangout, the Zodiac Club, in Greenwich Village.

 

9. The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
Three witches for the price of one in this fantastical comedy: Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer discover they have magic powers when a devilish stranger (Jack Nicholson) blows into town in answer to their prayers. He wreaks so much havoc that they ultimately have to draw on their powers to get rid of him too…

 

WICKED WITCHES
10. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Why The Wizard of Oz has become a staple of the Christmas TV schedule beats me: it should surely be reserved for Hallowe’en viewing. After all, you don’t get very many witches who are uglier than the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) with her hatchet features, snotter-coloured complexion, scrawny frame and stripy stockings. And that voice that saws right through one’s head as it cackles “Surrender Dorothy!”. Her entourage of flying monkeys in military costume aside, the Wicked Witch is a creature of convention with all the accessories that are considered de rigueur for a witch at Hallowe’en: broomstick, cauldron, pointy black hat….

 

11. The Witches (1990)
Considerably more evil than the Wicked Witch of the West – just watch how she gleefully pushes a baby in its pram down the steep slope to a cliff edge – is the Grand High Witch, played by Anjelica Huston in Nicolas Roeg’s movie of Roald Dahl’s book The Witches. With her Hitler-like oratory and her desire to wipe out a section of the population (ie: children), the Grand High Witch is one of the scariest sorceresses ever portrayed on film. And far too terrifying for young audiences.

On a lighter note, she is also one of the most striking-looking of all movie witches: you’ve got to admit that, in her slinky black satin, purple trimmed, dress, her long black gloves, Cleopatra-style hair and blood-red lips, she cuts quite a dash. At least, that is, until she peels off her human skin to reveal her real, hideous, witch face.

 

12. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most magnificent villain of them all? Not the Queen from Snow White, though she is a contender, but the elegant, beautiful and utterly evil Maleficent, the bad witch from Disney’s wonderful interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. Left off the guest list for the christening of Princess Aurora, this horned witch casts a terrifying spell on the infant: that when she turns 18, she will prick her finger on a spindle and die…   

     
Like Anjelica Huston’s Grand High Witch, Maleficent is a vision in swathes of black and purple (clearly the only colours for any self-respecting sorceress to sport), and a supermodel of the supernatural world (by way of total contrast with her arch enemies – the three dumpy, frumpy good fairies). And forget your black cats and brooms; Maleficent has a crow as her assistant and can transform herself into whatever she likes – most memorably, a monstrous, fire-breathing dragon.